Abigail Davis Spanberger

Abigail Anne Davis Spanberger (née Davis; born August 7, 1979) is an American politician and former intelligence officer who served as a Representative from Virginia in the United States Congress from 2019 to 2025 and is the governor-elect of Virginia. A member of the Democratic Party, she represented Virginia’s 7th congressional district for three terms and was elected governor of Virginia in 2025, becoming the first woman to be elected to that office. Over the course of her congressional career, she contributed to the legislative process during a significant period in American history, participating in the democratic process and representing the interests of her constituents in a closely divided and politically competitive district.

Spanberger was born Abigail Anne Davis in Red Bank, New Jersey, on August 7, 1979, to Martin Davis, a police officer who later became a federal law enforcement officer with the United States Postal Inspection Service, and Eileen Davis, a nurse. Her family moved frequently during her childhood, living in Maine, the New York City area, and Philadelphia before settling in Short Pump, Virginia, when she was 13. She has recalled that from a young age she wanted to be a spy, even writing her diary in code. After the family’s move to Virginia, she attended John Randolph Tucker High School in Henrico County and later served as a page for U.S. Senator Chuck Robb, an early exposure to federal public service that preceded her later career in national security and elected office.

Spanberger earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Virginia in 2001. According to reporting by The Washington Post, by the time she completed her undergraduate studies she was conversationally fluent in English, Spanish, and “five or six more” languages, a skill set that would later support her work in intelligence. She went on to earn a Master of Business Administration through a joint international program between GISMA Business School in Germany and Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management. In the early 2000s, she taught English literature as a substitute teacher at the Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia. She received a conditional job offer from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in December 2002, and while awaiting completion of her security clearance background investigation, she worked as a postal inspector, following in her father’s professional footsteps and focusing on money laundering and narcotics cases.

In July 2006, after her background check was completed, Spanberger joined the CIA as an operations officer and case officer. In that capacity, she worked to identify, recruit, and manage foreign nationals who could provide intelligence of value to the United States government. She has stated publicly that her work involved gathering intelligence related to nuclear proliferation and terrorism, and her first overseas assignment was in Brussels. Over the course of her CIA career, she traveled extensively, operated undercover, and at various points held five different passports. In 2014, after approximately eight years with the Agency, she left the CIA and entered the private sector, joining Royall & Company (later incorporated into EAB) to conduct consulting work for colleges and universities. Following the 2016 presidential election, she became involved with Emerge America, an organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for office, and in 2017 Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe appointed her to the Virginia Fair Housing Board.

Spanberger announced her candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives in July 2017, seeking to represent Virginia’s 7th congressional district in the 2018 election against incumbent Republican Dave Brat, a Tea Party–aligned member of Congress. She has said she began seriously considering a challenge after attending a February 2017 town hall meeting Brat held in Nottoway County and decided definitively to run in May 2017 after the House of Representatives voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. On June 12, 2018, she won the Democratic primary with 73 percent of the vote against Dan Ward, receiving more votes than any other candidate in the Virginia primaries that day. During the general election campaign, the Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC closely aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, mounted an attack campaign attempting to link her to terrorism based on an improperly released copy of her SF-86 security clearance form, a disclosure that violated privacy rules. On November 6, 2018, she defeated Brat by just over 6,800 votes, becoming the first Democrat to win the seat since 1970. Although Brat carried eight of the district’s ten counties, Spanberger prevailed by large margins in Henrico and Chesterfield Counties, winning them by a combined margin of more than 30,000 votes. Her campaign raised approximately $5.8 million, significantly more than Brat’s $2.1 million, in what was widely viewed as a bellwether race for control of the House of Representatives.

Taking office on January 3, 2019, Spanberger served three consecutive terms in the House, from 2019 to 2025, during a period marked by intense partisan polarization, the presidency of Donald J. Trump, the impeachment proceedings against him, and the COVID-19 pandemic. For her first two terms, she represented a district that extended from the suburbs of Richmond westward toward the Shenandoah Valley. Following the 2020 redistricting cycle, the boundaries of Virginia’s 7th district were substantially redrawn and no longer included her home in Henrico County. She publicly weighed whether to seek reelection in the new configuration before deciding to run. Throughout her tenure, she was identified with the moderate wing of the Democratic Party and, along with Representatives Elissa Slotkin and Mikie Sherrill, was described as part of a “mod squad” that positioned itself as a centrist counterweight to more progressive members sometimes referred to as “the squad.” Spanberger and Sherrill shared a Capitol Hill apartment for four years while serving together in Congress.

Spanberger faced competitive reelection contests in both 2020 and 2022. In 2020 she ran against Republican nominee Nick Freitas, a member of the Virginia House of Delegates whose district overlapped much of the northern portion of the 7th. She won with 51 percent of the vote to Freitas’s 49 percent, again losing eight of the district’s ten counties but carrying Henrico and Chesterfield Counties by a combined margin of about 43,400 votes, roughly five times her overall margin of victory of 8,400 votes. Her reelection was aided by Joseph R. Biden Jr. narrowly carrying what is now the 7th District, the first time a Democratic presidential candidate had won that area since 1948. After the election, on a leaked Democratic caucus call on November 5, she sharply criticized her party’s 2020 campaign strategy, arguing that Republican attacks invoking “socialism” and “defund the police” had damaged Democrats in swing districts and warning colleagues never to use the word “socialist” in their own messaging. Her comments, which CNN political editor Chris Cillizza characterized as “hard truth” for the party, sparked internal debate and were publicly disputed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Representative Rashida Tlaib, among others.

In the 2022 midterm elections, Spanberger was widely regarded as one of the most vulnerable Democratic incumbents. She faced Republican Yesli Vega, a Prince William County supervisor, law enforcement officer, and candidate endorsed by Governor Glenn Youngkin and former President Trump. Despite pre-election polling that suggested a close race, Spanberger defeated Vega by a margin of 52 percent to 48 percent, the largest victory margin of her congressional career up to that time. Over the course of her House service, she developed a reputation as a centrist Democrat willing to break with party leadership on messaging and some policy emphases. According to FiveThirtyEight’s congressional vote tracker, she voted in line with President Trump’s stated positions 8.7 percent of the time, reflecting the competitive nature of her district, which had given Trump 50 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 44 percent in the 2016 presidential election. At the same time, PolitiFact reported that while she publicly disagreed with certain Biden administration immigration policies that did not come to a vote in Congress, she voted for all 73 House bills and resolutions that President Biden explicitly supported during the period examined.

Spanberger’s committee assignments reflected her background in national security and her district’s agricultural interests. She served on the House Committee on Agriculture, including the Subcommittee on Commodity Exchanges, Energy, and Credit and the Subcommittee on Conservation and Forestry, chairing the latter. She also served on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, including the Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation and the Subcommittee on Europe, Eurasia, Energy, and the Environment. In addition to her committee work, she was active in several caucuses, including the New Democrat Coalition, the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, the LGBT Equality Caucus, the Congressional Armenian Caucus, the Congressional Caucus for the Equal Rights Amendment, and the Rare Disease Caucus. Her legislative and oversight work frequently drew on her intelligence and law enforcement experience, particularly in the areas of national security, foreign policy, and law enforcement accountability.

During her time in Congress, Spanberger took notable positions on key national issues. On September 23, 2019, she joined six other freshman Democrats with national security backgrounds in publishing a Washington Post opinion piece calling for an impeachment inquiry into President Trump over allegations that he had sought foreign assistance in the 2020 election by withholding security aid to Ukraine. She later announced that she would vote in favor of impeachment, stating that the president’s actions violated his oath of office, endangered national security, and betrayed the public trust. In June 2020, amid nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd, she publicly criticized Trump’s response, comparing it to the tactics of authoritarian leaders and condemning the use of tear gas and rubber bullets against peaceful demonstrators near the White House to clear a path for a presidential photo opportunity at St. John’s Episcopal Church. At the same time, she opposed efforts by some Democrats to amend the Insurrection Act of 1807, arguing that changes to the rarely used statute would not achieve the intended reforms. In a November 2021 interview with The New York Times following the 2021 Virginia gubernatorial election, she again criticized Democratic messaging, saying that voters had not elected Biden “to be F.D.R.” but to restore normalcy and address concerns such as inflation, which she argued her party had been too slow to acknowledge.

After three terms in the House, Spanberger chose not to seek reelection to Congress in 2024 and instead ran for governor of Virginia. In the 2025 gubernatorial election, she was elected governor, defeating Republican nominee Winsome Earle-Sears. Her victory made her the first woman elected governor in Virginia’s history and marked a continuation of her political trajectory from local constituent-focused representation in a swing congressional district to statewide executive leadership. As governor-elect, she carried forward the centrist, security-focused, and pragmatically oriented political profile she had developed during her years in Congress and in her prior career in intelligence and public service.